All posts tagged Online

Snapchat responded to reports that tens of thousands of photos shared privately on its service had been intercepted and posted publicly, blaming unauthorized third-party apps for the security breach.

“Snapchat’s servers were never breached and were not the source of these leaks,” a spokeswoman for Snapchat said in a statement Friday via email. “Snapchatters were victimized by their use of third-party apps to send and receive Snaps, a practice that we expressly prohibit in our Terms of Use precisely because they compromise our users’ security.” Read More »

The typical U.S. small business is not spending much, if anything, on Facebook ads this year, according to the WSJ’s story today on the rising cost of advertising on the social-media outlet.

Facebook ads cost more, and are reaching fewer users, because there’s less ad space available and competition for that space has intensified. The story cites the experiences of three small businesses — an earphone-maker, an electric-bike maker and a Web platform for enrolling children in classes — with mixed results.

Facebook says the cost of its ads rose because the ads deliver more value. It also says it has many happy customers, including Amy Norman, co-founder of Little Passports Inc., who in June began spending about $250,000 monthly on Facebook ads – or a whopping $3 million a year. More on this after the jump… Read More »

That’s a main finding of United Parcel Service’s 2014 “Pulse of the Online Shopper” survey conducted by comScore. A whopping 93% of shoppers have taken some type of action while shopping online in order to qualify for free shipping. Those actions range from adding more items to a cart (58%) to choosing the slowest transit time (50%) to searching for a promo code (47%).

More than 80% of customers are willing to wait an extra two days in return for free shipping, the survey shows. A third will wait more than five extra days. Read More »

John Krafcik, the former Chief Executive Officer of Hyundai Motor America, joined the board of director of TrueCar Inc., a car-shopping Web site that helps buyers get a no-haggle price from dealers.

About 3% of all new car purchases in the U.S. now are funneled through the Web site and Mr. Krafcik – part of the operating committee – has been added to help build relationships with automakers and dealers.

Mr. Krafcik left Hyundai at the end of 2013 after his contract wasn’t renewed. The departure was a shock because he had been among the most successful executives in the industry over his five-year tenure atop Hyundai Motor Co.’s American arm. While at the helm, Hyundai’s market share nearly doubled and its reputations improved dramatically.

His role at TrueCar, based in Santa Monica, Calif., won’t be his only job. More on this after the jump… Read More »

Amazon customers have proven to be big fans of the Amazon Prime membership service, which gets you free shipping and a video streaming service for a $79 yearly membership fee. The company now claims subscribers in the tens of millions, and more than a million new member signed up in the peak of the Christmas shopping season last year. But are people willing to pay more for it?

Chase Carey, chief operating officer of Fox network’s parent Twenty-First Century Fox publicly flagged that possibility last spring. Less well known is that ABC network’s parent Walt Disney Co privately considered a similar move for ABC around the same time, say people familiar with the situation.

That idea was one of many options considered as part of a strategic review “fire drill”, the people said. These included whether to sell ABC’s owned and operated TV stations while keeping the network, one of the people said, an idea that dovetails with converting ABC to a cable channel.

Ever wonder what kind of phone your great-grandfather might have purchased in the Age Before Smartphones?

Ancestry.com, an online repository of historical records and web service for building family trees, has spent the past year working with retail conglomerate Sears Holdings Corp. to archive over 250,000 pages of Sears, Roebuck & Company fall and spring season catalogs spanning from 1896 to 1993.

The Utah-based Ancestry.com, which claims six billion searchable names worldwide, says it has added nearly a century’s worth of consumer goods to its website to help users connect their ancestors to items from earlier times. Read More »

Earlier this year, Internet-radio operator Pandora was one of three services selected by Facebook to offer instant personalization of its site to users based on information from their Facebook account. The selection briefly ensnared the music service in a privacy controversy involving an Internet giant before Facebook backtracked on some of the changes and made it easier to opt out of the personalization. But Facebook’s choice of Pandora also was an indicator of the radio service’s popularity.

Rafael Fuchs

Tim Westergren, founder of Pandora

Pandora recently had its first profitable quarter and is capitalizing on the ubiquity of smart phones to boost its business. A recent Wall Street Journal report identified it as one of the 50 most promising start-ups in the U.S.

Pandora’s founder Tim Westergren spoke with Digits about privacy, advertising and the rise of mobile computing. His responses are summarized below.

Did the controversy around Facebook’s privacy changes hit Pandora at all?

Yes, there were some users who were really upset. … They would say things like, “How dare you. I didn’t give you permission to do this.” Read More »

Watching live sports on television via the Web may have just gotten easier.

Getty Images

Some NHL games will now be shown via Boxee’s Web-to-TV platform.

Starting Monday, Web-to-TV software company Boxee will distribute the National Hockey League’s Game Center Live online video content. In addition, the National Basketball Association is set to announce a similar partnership with Roku, maker of a digital video player that streams Netflix and Amazon Video on Demand via the Web, for the distribution of NBA digital video content, beginning with some of this season’s playoff games.

The NHL’s Game Center Live streams approximately a thousand of the league’s 1,200 games per season, or any games that are not national exclusives on Versus or NBC, the league’s partner networks, for $19.95 a month. No additional fees will be applied for the streaming of NHL Game Center Live content through Boxee’s social-media enabled, web-to-TV platform. Since the NHL is currently wrapping up its 2009-2010 season, the new NHL content available through the Boxee platform is minimal, but a spokesman for Boxee says this should lay the groundwork for a continued partnership into next season. Read More »

Starting Monday, personal-finance site Mint.com will double the number of financial institutions from which it can receive account information.

Mint’s Web site

The change is important for Mint as the site seeks to expand beyond its core base and address the regular complaint that specific financial institutions aren’t listed. The site will provide access to more users than just those who use banking juggernauts like Bank of America, Citibank or HSBC, for example. It’s an especially timely development, as many consumers are reconsidering their relationships with financial institutions.

The expansion is possible because Mint is now using data and aggregation software from Intuit Inc., the company that makes Quicken and TurboTax and bought Mint for $170 million last fall. Previously, Mint partnered with Yodlee for back-end data on account aggregation, said Aaron Forth, head of product at Mint. Read More »